Our grape harvest off one vine has been amazing this year. My granddaughter helped me pick and clean them and then insisted on treading them! She is home schooling and we had been looking at photographs of the harvest in France both mechanical and by feet.
The Autumn colours down the drive are just beginning and contrasted with the deep blue sky they are wonderful. The leaf sweeping is not so fantastic!
Now is the time to cut the hedges, repair the fences and clean the chimneys etc and we have three wonderful contractors for this.
Jeff Ling - 01258-473-663 - cuts our field hedges with enormous precision and care. He also lays hedges and keeps our fencing in order. We now have a beautiful new gate and rails at the top of the drive which is a huge improvement on the old one and safer as I no longer have to climb the rickety old one.
The garden hedges have just been given a hair cut ready for next year’s weddings by Ian Davies our tree surgeon - 07977 127483 - the Yew hedge at the bottom of the drive is beginning to look quite “Gaudiesque”
Last, but not least, Dale Edds from Drakes Chimney Cleaners has been to clean the chimneys - quite a job, they need 14 lengths of pole to reach the top! Sadly it was raining but we still got a photograph of the brush coming out of the top - no longer the same shape as the old ones.www.drakeschimneycleaners.co.uk
Finally, Michael and I have just put up a new polytunnel to help us get an early start on pots etc for the 11 weddings we are still hoping to hold in 2021 - all done amazingly without a cross word!
Ross Kidner from Moonraker Preserves - www.moonrakerpreserves.co.uk - came for the last time this year to pick fruit - this time quinces in the rain!
He took away about 15 trays which were speedily converted into pulp at his unit near Dorchester. At present with Fairs no longer happening, Ross is selling his Jam at the Fruit and Vegetable stall in Wareham Market.
Sliced quince bubbling on the stove
Once again he gave us another generous donation to Charity. We have chosen to give the donations to Home Start North Dorset, soon to be joined to Home Start West Dorset, so giving even more families with young children a helping hand in this difficult time - www.home-start-northdorset.co.uk
During the last storm, it was like being behind Niagra Falls! Luckily Michael’s nephew in law has a gutter cleaning firm and he came down with his family for lunch and brought his amazing gutter hoover.
Huge amounts of grass and mud came out and we were able to see the finished clean product with a special camera. Definitely booking him in next year! www.made4pressure.com/
Apples, like all the fruit this year, have been wonderful and enormous!
We have stored some and then given most of the others away - some to the Food Bank and Blandford Community Kitchen.
Some we made into apple juice with a press kindly lent by a lady in the village - we finished with 40 plus bottles!
We have been inundated with vegetables and fruit this year so there has been great preserving and freezing in the kitchen and our shelves are full of jam and chutney.
We had so many figs that we gave huge amounts away and Ross from Moonraker Preserves came to pick the highest ones - www.moonrakerpreserves.co.uk
Our Trombone squash did particularly well with on growing to 3feet 8inches in length before it fell!
Squashes did not grow so large this year but are wonderfully colourful!
The garden has been amazing this year. With Lockdown, it seemed so dreadful that no-one was going to see it so we opened the gardens to friends in the village on a Tuesday. Strictly by appointment, the visits gave people somewhere new to walk and it gave us new people to chat to!
Summer brought us the most incredible wisteria and roses and the visits gave us the impetus to keep the garden up to scratch.
As we moved to August, the colours changed to yellows and oranges and dark pinks but it stayed beautiful.
We have always had the gardens filled with wild life but this year it has been better than ever! Some has been more welcome than others as deer ravaged the borders eating everything from hostas and geraniums to roses and fruit trees but they looked so beautiful. Hopefully next year, with 11 weddings, the noise will keep them in the fields and woods.
Grass snakes and slow worms have been much braver at showing themselves - with one grass snake shedding its skin in the kitchen garden. No tadpoles this year but many toads of all sizes - the second on was only about an inch long!
More baby birds seemed to fall out of their nests but all had happy endings with their parents continuing to feed them until they could fly.
May 2020 - Katy Knott from Floral Shaker, arrived the other day to pick up her first tray of edible flowers for her cocktails. Katy used to run a wonderful florist, Rustic Rose, in Sturminster Newton but has moved on to launch Floral Shaker, a contemporary mix of floral design, cocktails and workshops - they are so beautiful.
katy@floralshaker.co.uk / www.floralshaker.co.uk / Instagram@floralshaker
Her aim is to create an inspiring atmosphere for gathering ideas for a stylish wedding or colourful party with the perfect floral creations and cocktail experience. Her fun designer cocktails mix edible flowers and traditional recipes with a modern twist. She also runs fun and practical flower workshops suitable for all skill levels, either one-to-one or for groups - great for hen parties.
We have agreed to supply some of these flowers from the garden here which is very exciting. The pansies are the first to be planted out and they look lovely in the raised beds instead of leeks and the early roses are out.
With the relaxing of Lockdown rules, it was great to be able to welcome artists from the Poole and East Dorset Art Society for their annual visit to paint in the gardens. We had about thirty painters setting up their easels, all keeping a good social distance apart, and they produced some fantastic work. You can see some of these below. One even painted my daughter’s wreck of a car which lives up by the stables.
They are a lovely group of people and I was sad this year not to be able spend as much time with them as usual.
One of the artists also sent over some wonderful photographs of the garden.
9th May and the Gazebo was covered with bunting of a different sort - not for a wedding but to celebrate VE Day. Nothing special going on down in the village so we had a VE Day tea complete with Vera Lyn songs! I could not find the bunting box anywhere, some being contemporary with 1946, so made some bunting from napkins left over from the Jubilee.
The Wisterias were amazing this year - just so sad not to be able to show to visiting couples. Larger and longer blooms this year and covered with bees.
All the flowers as they come out seems more prolific and more beautiful than ever - almost as if they know that we need some wonderful in our lives during Lockdown Covid 19
We are still hopeful that our weddings later in the year will continue so preparations in the garden are continuing.
The Greenhouse is full of seeds popping up and plugs are being grown on. Dahlias, lilies and salvias are starting into growth and plants being moved all over the garden to make it even more beautiful than ever - this has it’s downside as they all need constant watering in this fantastic sunshine.
Sadly future couples are not able to visit so we are planning a video to give them a virtual tour. Meanwhile the blossom is amazing and lifts the heart in these troubled times
The dining room is now a work place for making Bags for Scrubs rather than the place that Couples meet the Registrars before their Celebration.
Following an appeal to the village clubs, pillowcases have been pouring in for me to make into Bags and with 17 made by a village lady we have now just topped the 50 mark! These are being taken today to the Blandford distribution centre.
Several other ladies in the village are stitching away and pillowcases continue to arrive so we are now aiming for 100.
No posts for the last month - Covid 19 has taken over our thoughts. 7 brides with possibly no weddings this year. All their hopes and dreams thrown up in the air.
So far our first two weddings have postponed to 2021 and the rest are crossing their fingers. The village has been amazing. We asked them via Facebook if they would be happy for us to hold 11 weddings next year and they overwhelmingly said yes! We are so grateful. Next year will be flat out!
Meanwhile, our lovely gardeners are still allowed to work, one at time and a lawn apart from both of us. Great work has been going on, with much re-doing of the borders to make everything as beautiful as we can for our later weddings.
It is sometimes hard to realise that so much is wrong in the world at the moment with the trees breaking into blossom, the primroses flowering better than ever before and our new greenhouse filling up with seedling vegetables and flowers.
Our thoughts go out to all those who are not as lucky as us and are confined to a flat with no outside space and even more to those families where a member has fallen victim to the virus. Some of our brides are working on the front line and we are thinking of them constantly.
The last storm also twisted our telephone lines - thank you BT for connecting us again today - extremely efficient engineers who were very helpful in keeping the drive free when we needed and managed to complete the task without damaging the daffodils which are now in full bloom.
The last, unnamed storm, seems to have caused as much damage as Dennis. One silver birch down, loads of branches including one hung up in the fir by the stables. Our wonderful tree surgeon has once again been to visit and cleared the debris - see photograph below of him after bringing down the branch from the fir.
Ian Davis - Tree Surgeon /24 hour call out/07977127483 - 07531341239
Good news as well, the daffodils are weathering the weather and making two yellow borders down the drive. Sadly , though as they are up so early this year, they are covering the snowdrops.
We are thinking of all the poor people who have been flooded out again in Wales, Scotland, and other parts of England and give thanks that we have only suffered a little damage. Hopefully Storm Dennis has passed us now. The valley is flooded and we have had some branches down as well as the damage shown below. A panel from the small greenhouse flew about 100 yards out over the gate of the Walled Garden and into the bushes!
Happy, Happy Valentines to all our readers!! Have a wonderful evening and I hope you are not too blown away tomorrow by Storm Dennis.
…. should be Shepherd’s warning but after the most amazing red sky the sun came out and it was a wonderful sunny if frosty day.
